Tag: Loss of self in writing

After watching this talk I could not not post the link to it here. Her talk describes my own process, and maybe yours as well, of writing. Specifically, writing poetry. She touches on how the Divine is a part of that process.

I have always known this to be true; that writing comes through me, not necessarily from me. That I’m (often) only a scribe.

I’ve always thought of it as being touched by the hand of You Know. Or maybe better, touching that hand. That’s a pretty big assertion but it’s true, and the best way I can describe the experience. And, the experience is beyond and beyond bliss. It’s what gives me the courage to keep coming back to the often-for-me-terrifyingly-blank page.

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I knew I wanted to take the blogging 101 class again after my limp finish but I can’t believe a poetry class is being offered as well. I can’tbelieveit! I’m so happy-petrified!

The first time around the blogging 101 class I barely limped over the finish line. I spent more time dealing with the tech aspects than writing, and that staggered my confidence, which hurt my writing motivation. The problem was I never read the additional tech directions Michelle was always kind enough to point to when I got stuck because I was too afraid they’d get me more lost. Read them! Now I’m excited again.

A poetry class! Ayiiii! I’ll have to turn off the TV. No, I’ll burn the TV! Okay, I’ll store the TV in a really hard-to-get-to place. Oh fuck, I’m feeling mute and stupid and mute again. I’ve sat here unable to keep writing because I’m thinking about what I’m going to write. So not good because poetry is my first love.

A long time ago I wrotepoetry was a budding poet, and too new to be afraid, so I wrote with abandon. I had talent but then, I don’t know, I got self-conscious, or, I started liking my own writing too much, or the praise I got for it and it just…went away. It was one of the most painful times of my life. I couldn’t write anything. Anything. Towards the middle and end I drank a lot. I didn’t think I’d ever come out the other end of that horrible time, that painful lesson but I did.

I wrote a little about that experience during the blogging class. About the Icarus experience. (Or maybe better put, the Tom Cruise experience. I used to love his acting but at some point I think Cruise started loving his acting just a liiittle bit too much and I can’t help but still cringe a little when I see him on talk-shows. I, for one, can just tell he’s lost access to that place, that authenticity, that forgetting of the self, and love of the doing.

That can get me: thinking that what I have to say or how I say it is critical (okay, ew). And I think that’s what got me stuck earlier in this post; that, and thinking too much, period. But I know, I know, that if I relax and write the truth, just land on emotional experience and write from there, lose myself in writing, I’ll be okay.